Alabama U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville says President Donald Trump should defund major American cities where leadership is “godawful.”

Tuberville appeared on The Benny Show with Benny Johnson on Wednesday, commenting on several issues, including his upcoming run for the Alabama’s governor’s seat.

Tuberville was asked if President Donald Trump should cut off funding to large “sanctuary” cities that attract immigrants.

“You can stop the federal funding,” Tuberville said. “President Trump can do anything he wants when it comes to the federal. Again, these inner-city rats, they live off the federal government. And that’s one reason we’re $37 trillion in debt.

“And it’s time we find these rats and we send them back home, that are living off the American taxpayers, that are working very hard every week to pay taxes.”

Johnson asked Tuberville about Zohran Mamdani, a New York State assemblyman who won the Democratic primary for the New York City mayor’s race on Tuesday.

Mamdani, a democratic socialist born in Uganda to Indian parents, became an American citizen in 2018, shortly after graduating college, according to the AP.

Johnson called Mamdani a “communist,” and said Democrats are encouraging illegal immigration to expand the party’s voting bloc. Tuberville said large cities, like New York and Los Angeles, are havens for undocumented immigrants.

“That’s the easiest place to do it, Benny, in these big cities with all these government handouts, where they can hang out on the street, steal whatever they want to steal,” Tuberville said.

“Chicago, Detroit, they’re all next. It’ll happen in the big cities, it’ll sweep across the country, and then they’ll try to start going into the medium-sized cities. But we can’t wait ‘til that point.”

Tuberville said he couldn’t believe Mamdani won the primary.

“Our great cities of L.A. and New York have to be the spotlight for our country, but they’re gone,” Tuberville said.

“It’s going to be unbelievable what’s going to happen to both of those cities if they continue this same leadership. They don’t know anything about discipline. They don’t know anything about work ethic. They don’t know anything about teamwork. Any of those things that help make a society great, they could care less.”

Asked what he would say to people in New York or California looking to move to Alabama, Tuberville said they should not “expect a free lunch.”

“You are not going to be welcome if you are going to bring that Communist Islamic atmosphere with you. We are not going to deal with it,” Tuberville said. “They are going to try and overwhelm us….We have got to fight back.”

Tuberville compared New York and Los Angeles to cities in Europe that he said are “gone.”

“Mass migration, overrun by Muslims, and giving leadership to the mayors of all these European cities, you know, it’s coming from the Muslim faith. And you know, again, there’s a lot of good Muslims, but not this radical Islamic terrorism plot that they’re pushing toward globalism and the United States of America. I mean, it’s coming, we all know it, and we’d better stop it.”

He also called for Trump to fire Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell. Earlier this week, Trump said Powell has “low I.Q.” and suggested that he has narrowed down the list of potential replacements to three or four people, according to CNN.

Powell was first nominated to the position by Trump in 2017 and nominated to a second term by President Joe Biden in 2022.

“Nobody’s selling a home because of the interest rates,” he said. “They’re going to keep their 3% loan and not sell a house. We don’t have enough houses for people, I know, in our area. There’s not any building going on. We’ve got to help the middle class. Jerome Powell is not helping the middle class. He’s destroying the middle class.”